


The Gypsy (Wheel of Fortune)

by kickflaw



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-11
Updated: 2010-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickflaw/pseuds/kickflaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. The one where Merlin is a gypsy fortune-teller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gypsy (Wheel of Fortune)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [itachitachi](http://itachitachi.livejournal.com/), who discussed this concept with me ages ago, and then continued to persist about it until I buckled. THANK YOU, LOVE, THIS WAS A WONDERFUL ORDEAL TO WRITE.
> 
> Betaed by [thierrys](http://thierrys.livejournal.com/). ♥

The Gypsy (Wheel of Fortune)

The day the gypsies drew their haphazard circle at the edge of the slums beyond the walls of Camelot proper, Uther commanded Arthur to go amongst them. In years past, his father had always driven them out before they could make camp. Too much like the Druids, too close to the wilds where magic lurked. This time though, the people were unhappy, Uther said. They were hard-pressed from a long winter, still not recovered after a wet, meager spring. Mud still filled the fields; the herds were thin. They needed a distraction. Still, Uther would not have magic-users near. Arthur was to ensure the gypsies were just that—damned wandering gypsies. He trusted no one else to judge accurately, to comprehend the smallest trace of sorcery.

Arthur, puffed up with pride at the praise, gathered a few of his closest men and together they drew dull-colored cloaks about them and invented coarse, peasant lives to share. Gleeful in their deception, they trekked through the city, under the dank and rotten beams of the lower town, out past the walls and into the gypsy circle.

There was fire and smoke and all manner of unscrubbed heathen debauchery. Arthur flinched at the dirt under their fingernails, but couldn't resist taking to the grass with one of the dark-skinned women who smiled at him. She wore a thin shift, simple and light, unlike the ladies of the court. One tug and she was undone. She was barefoot, had circlets around her ankles that jangled as he thrust. The men wore little better, trousers cut off at the knee and sleeveless tunics, barely belted. Afterwards, he ate their food and drank their spiced liquor and watched them singing and dancing, so many of them with their lithe, brown bodies.

The next morning he was hung-over as a sailor, and his purse was half as heavy. Furious, he resolved to return. She was no whore, he was sure, just a thieving bitch. If they'd known who he was, they would not have dared.

A woman was waiting for him just outside the flickering firelight. She said, "Welcome, Prince Arthur," and smiled, holding out a goblet of their heady ale. "Will you join us again tonight?"

Arthur pretended not to be shocked that his story hadn't been believed. The gypsies were too clever by far. But he took her offering and sat beside her as a boar turned over the fire, smoking savory and hot. The drums were not so loud now, but his head thrummed even so. Summer was high, everything smelled of meat and human sweat, and shadows were everywhere within the hazy heat. Her name was Nimueh. These were her people to lead, she said as she stroked his arm. A woman in charge, he scoffed. Women do not lead.

Nimueh only laughed and led him out to dance.

Gypsy music was fiddles and pipes and stamping feet and crackling fire. Bright colors darted about, skirts, long dark curls with ribbons he wanted to crush in his palms. Arthur danced in Nimueh's arms, danced in the circles, danced alone until he fell and felt dirt crawl up underneath his fingernails.

He couldn't be sure how he made it back to his room, still drunk with his canopy spinning above him, purse even lighter than before. He woke to burning bright sunlight and the scent of smoke on his skin.

The third night Arthur brought his knights again, told them to make sure he did not lie with another gypsy temptress or souse himself on gypsy wine. He managed well enough, even if his men did not. He drank from his own flask, filled with watered-down ale. He returned no inviting smiles, stayed away from Nimueh. There were no traces of sorcery to be discovered here, just the reckless lives of hedonistic criminals. He would leave for good in just a minute, once the last of the venison was gone, and maybe he'd wait for the dances to abate. He would leave and give the tidings to his father—then someone spilled a bucket of water down his back.

The clumsy fool sputtered an apology, but failed to shrink back from Arthur's wrath. Instead he frowned vaguely through Arthur's rant and, incredibly, _interrupted_ him with an offer to tell his fortune "if that would appease your foul temper. Ehm, My Lord." It was so unbelievable that Arthur had accepted before he came to his senses.

The gypsy led him out of the main camp, out deep into the darkness, over crumpled grass and toward a ramshackle caravan, far outside the circle of sturdier wagons. The whole caravan shook as the gypsy tugged open the warped door, gestured Arthur inside. Despite the light of several small candles, it was dim and dusty inside. He could make out little more than a pathetic seating area and a sleeping board piled high with scraps and furs—and books, books and scrolls everywhere. Arthur's nose twitched with the beginning of a sneeze. The gypsy pushed him onto a cramped stool and folded his awkward, long body onto another so they sat facing each other across a messy table. In here, the scent of smoke was somehow stronger and richer, like the smell of the incense his father's priests burned. Perhaps it was the herbs hanging over the threshold.

"I make the medicine," the gypsy said, having caught Arthur looking.

"And tell fortunes?" Arthur asked.

He grinned. "I'm better at one but prefer the other."

While Arthur was trying to puzzle out what exactly was meant by that, the gypsy shoved everything off the table and pulled a deck of cards out of a nearby cupboard. He began to shuffle them. His hands moved faster than seemed possible, flipping the cards in arches and angles that should have made them scatter. His nails were too long and shiny, like a fine lady's, catching the candlelight so the tips of his fingers seemed to glow golden as numbers and symbols on battered paper flashed by.

Suddenly the deck was whole again and the gypsy set it gently on the table, said, "Shuffle."

Jitters crawled down Arthur's spine. He shook them off, picked up the deck and cut it a few times, lazily, not really trying. He was sure it'd been stacked.

The gypsy took the deck again then drew the top card, laid it down on the table over a spattering of spilled wax that had hardened into white-yellow globs. "The King of Cups, upright."

Arthur refused to ask; All the hairs on his body were rising into goosebumps, and yet it was so damn _hot_ in this dark, suffocating space.

The gypsy laid the next card on top the first, cross-ways. "The Three of Swords, reverse."

Shadows seemed the catch at the bottom of his lip, underneath his cheekbones and in the hollows of his eyes. There was a bundle of herbs tied in brown strings and beads behind his head, swinging _swish_ and then again, back, though Arthur couldn't feel any breeze. The gypsy looked straight at Arthur as he turned the next card. "The Page of Pentacles, reverse." His eyes had seemed, the candlelight—

Arthur shook out of the gaze and looked down: the cards were dog-eared, water-crinkled, ink faded. The gypsy's long fingers still rested where he'd laid the last card down, set beneath the other two, and painted on it was a pagan star and a young boy.

"You're cheating me," he said. He should be angrier, should drag this charlatan out and have him in the stocks for trickery, but he just wanted to _get out of there_, away from this prickling unease, away from all the queer light. He stood, knocking the stool into the rickety bed.

"No!" The gypsy reached for his wrist and caught it in a grip that sent sparks up Arthur's arm. "You shouldn't end a reading before it's complete. It's—"

His skin tingled; Arthur jerked away. "You should be glad I see you for the fraud you are and won't report your tricks to my father."

He slammed out of the caravan and returned to the well-known and well-loved space between Camelot's walls, got himself back into his rooms and his bed, large and soft and Pendragon red. He slept without motion, until the moon set, and then he dreamt.

>   
> _He was laughing at something, and he was kneeling on the ground, crowned by a pair of familiar hands. He saw Gaius, old and gasping. Morgana, eyes rolling white. Her maid, the dark girl, with veils hiding her face. Knights clashing under a lightning storm, wind howling like a thousand voices, and the gypsy was there, stamping his feet and spinning in the rain, glinting gold..._   
> 

In the late morning, Arthur woke with a feeling like drowning in his own lungs and an itch beneath his skin. His sheets were ropes. He went out, though his armor fit ill and clanged, and all day there was a humid easterly wind that pulled at his hair and smelled of smoke. His bones ached. He snapped at Morgana and ate too much at dinner, ate until he could barely move from it, and still wanted to eat more because the taste was still on his tongue, the taste of their meats and liquors. He dreamt again, and again, and walked in his sleep to the throne room, where his father found him in the earliest hours of the day. Arthur blinked at the crown on his father's head—felt displaced. Sometimes he closed his eyes for too long and the world hazed out around him. Sometimes he kept them open until they stung for moisture. Both failed to show him why this world suddenly didn't seem as real as it had before.

For three days he kept away, although the constant nagging want pressed in all around. Every time he turned his head, he thought he saw him, the gypsy, just out of the corner of his eye, but he was never really there. The dreams waited at night, lingered behind his thoughts like a weight, like knowledge.

By dusk on the third day he was jumping at shadows. He had a sense of being hunted, as though by a beast or a memory. _You shouldn't end a reading before it's complete,_ the gypsy had said, and now Arthur believed him—so his time he put Morgana's comb in his pocket and his father's heaviest iron ring on his finger and wore his richest, reddest cloak despite the heat, and ventured once more to the gypsy camp, to lift this curse of timelessness from his mind.

In his dreams, the gypsy wore many things, strange robes one second and plain peasant scarves the next, feathered hats and chainmail and, most often, the fine clothes and boots of a nobleman. It was jarring to see him, tapping his knuckles against his knee to the beat of the drums. Gypsy garb in the summer left his long, tanned arms bare, his collarbones and the shape of his wiry legs, his dirty feet. He looked up the moment Arthur reached the edge of the firelight, but only watched expressionlessly as Arthur fought his way through the crowd to his side.

"Crowded tonight," he said, standing between the gypsy and the dancers. He liked the shadow he cast on the gypsy's fidgeting hands.

"Tonight is special," said Nimueh. She was seated at the gypsy's side, her hair piled high around metal and fur, and she smiled at him. "A night for goodbyes."

"She means that they leave tomorrow," the gypsy said. "So tonight they'll dance and drink hardest, and give Camelot a proper sending off."

"Camelot's not going anywhere. You are," Arthur said.

The gypsy's lean forearm was locked in Nimueh's grip. "Am I?" he asked.

Arthur blinked. For a moment he'd seen again, this man, pale-skinned, his face softly and darkly bearded. His lips were the same. "Finish my reading," he said.

"Feeling it, are you?" The gypsy smirked. "I warned you. Can I dance first, or would that be too much to ask? Just one dance, for goodbyes?"

Perhaps if they'd been in the great hall of his father's castle, or had met at a feast in the house of a lord—but Arthur had no power here, not over these people, and besides, the gypsy was already stepping out into the circle with Nimueh, being drawn deeper by women in their best, brightest skirts. Arthur awkwardly stood, mesmerized by the sharp glints of light that bounced from the bells on their ankles. Every gypsy had them, tiny circlets that chimed chaotically _ting, ting, ting_ over the drums and sweet pipes.

They danced almost as one, turning and stamping their feet and clapping their hands and laughing. The people of Camelot hung about the edges, enjoying this last chance at a bittersweet diversion. Arthur sank back slowly onto a log, drank from the goblet that was somehow in his hand while he tried to discern a pattern in the beat. The gypsy, _his_ gypsy, could spin on the balls of his feet, dancing along with a grace that couldn't be predicted from their first meeting. He swung Nimueh as if she weighed nothing, and then bent the way her hands moved him. Arthur still didn't know his name.

"What's your name?" he asked when the gypsy returned to him, panting and sweaty, the dancing broken open at last.

"Hm? Oh. Merlin." The gypsy grinned. Merlin grinned. "Come on, then. Let's get you sorted."

Walking out into the dark with Merlin felt strangely normal, like one of those things that Arthur did every day. Merlin's caravan was as shambling and confined as before, his herbs still hanging, his candles still lit and flickering. The music that had been so loud outside was barely audible, little more than heart-beat dull pounding. On the table, the spread of cards hadn't been moved, though vials and other odd bits and ends had built up around it. Merlin cleared the debris while Arthur sat and studied them.

"Remember?" Merlin asked, sitting down across from him. "King of Cups, upright. Three of Swords, reverse. Page of Pentacles, reverse." He pointed at each in turn, and suddenly his fingers were _odd_ again, maybe too many knuckles, or not enough.

Arthur nodded.

Merlin picked up the deck, held it in the center of his palm as he reached towards Arthur. "Place your hand over mine."

Wariness was not a value Arthur had been taught. He covered Merlin's hand, touched the cool rough texture of his skin and the cooler slide of the cards, flat and wide, beneath his fingers—the world got suddenly smaller, drawing in around them, like the fever-dreams that had been Arthur's companion these past nights.

Merlin pulled his hand away and drew the top card. "The Hierophant, upright," he said, setting it down to the left of the main set. The yellow flames of Merlin's candles grew still in a way fire never should be. He placed another card directly above, "The World, upright," and another, this time to the right, completing the circle: "The Wheel of Fortune, upright." Arthur's breath came rattling from his chest; every muscle in his body was pulled taut as a hunter's bowstring. Merlin's shoulders, exposed by his sleeveless tunic, shook with a fine tremble of strain.

The next card Merlin placed away from the others, outside the pattern—and carefully, so that it made only the smallest of sounds as it fell from his fingers. He stared at it a moment before he murmured, "The Star. Reverse."

Whatever feeling had been hunting Arthur, whatever strange magic had been haunting him, left the caravan all at once. In its absence, his bones felt light enough to fly with. He let out a giddy breath, asked, "Is it done?"

Merlin didn't respond. He had his head in his hands, gazing wide-eyed at the spread from between his wrists, and that's when it occurred to Arthur—Merlin was a sorcerer. He had to be.

Arthur wasn't quite in his head as he snapped a hand around one of Merlin's forearms, threaded with muscle but thin, so he could touch his fingertips to his thumb. He felt numb and cold, the heat of summer peeling away from him in his humiliation. _No, what, hey_, and other meaningless protests were in the air, but Arthur ignored them, dragged Merlin across the table and slammed him into the rickety cupboards. Half-burnt candles and empty, dusty vials tumbled out and down around Merlin as he slid to the floor, cards caught on his skin. He looked so mild: a harmless, useless boy, crumpled there with his arms over his dark hair. Not the kind to wield evil magic to bewitch a prince. He still had the small bells and ribbons of the women, gifts, wound around his ankles.

Arthur shoved the table back and knelt, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him close, Merlin so hot, hot like coals under roasting meat. He knew he must still be ensnared in some gypsy enchantment when he brought his lips down onto Merlin's and let Merlin's breath fill his mouth, when he felt such a fierce curl of lust as he'd ever felt before.

Easy, like the girl from the first night, Merlin opened for him. His hands pulled hard in Arthur's hair but he let Arthur strip him down and mouth at his knobby joints and pink nipples. Arthur looked at him, with the candlelight flickering haphazardly over his lean body, at the strict white lines that marked where his shabby clothes usually rested. More magic, probably, the way Merlin bent and folded so that Arthur could take him like that, own him up hard, trying to brace himself but his hands kept slipping on cards and candlewax.

"You've enchanted me," he panted into Merlin's neck, afterwards.

"No," said Merlin. "No, no. I am a sorcerer, but this spell isn't mine. Destiny is a funny thing."

As foolish as it was, Arthur believed him. He managed to open his eyes, just barely, and saw one of the cards from his reading caught just next to Merlin's head. The Wheel of Fortune.

"Stay."

"Yeah. Yes."

* * *

END

**Author's Note:**

> The Spread is a modified version of the Celtic Cross. There are many variations for this spread, but the one I used is based on [this](http://www.wyrdology.com/scrying/tarot/celtic-cross-spread.html) layout, with cards 7, 8, and 9 removed. Reverse refers to when a card is pulled and laid upside down.
> 
> A brief outline of Merlin's reading follows. Meanings that are italicized are the ones I was relying on most heavily in selecting those cards and in shaping Merlin's interpretation. I had some cards in mind from the outset, but I reviewed the whole deck at [this website](http://www.themysticeye.com/info/tarotcardm.htm).
> 
> **Card 1**: The Significator  
> The King of Cups, Upright - A business man, _a man of law, kindness, a considerate person, a willingness to take on responsibility_, and enjoyment of the arts or sciences
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 2**: The Basic Problem  
> The Three of Swords, Reverse - Disorder, confusion, loss, _sorrow due to loss_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 3**: The Foundation of the Problem  
> The Page of Pentacles, Reverse - _Wastefulness_, luxury, _rebellious, opposing ideas/opinions_, bad news
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 4**: The Immediate Past  
> The Hierophant, Upright - _A need to conform, social approval, bonded to the conventions of society_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 5**: The Best Future  
> The World, Upright - Completion, perfection, recognition, honors, the end result, success, _fulfillment, triumph, eternal life_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 6**: The Next Step  
> The Wheel of Fortune, Upright – _Destiny_, fortune, _a special gain_, an unusual loss, end of a problem, _unexpected events_, advancement, progress
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Card 10**: The Final Outcome  
> The Star, Reverse - Unfulfilled hopes, disappointment, _dreams are crushed_, bad luck, _imbalance_


End file.
